Introduction

Building a successful development company requires having a leader with technical know-how and excellent management skills. Today we speak with SmartLogic President and Founder Yair Flicker about his company’s origin story, evolution, and their Elixir adoption process. Early in the episode, we talk about Yair’s first jobs before diving into how he founded SmartLogic. An important transition point, we then chat about how he moved from writing code to running a business. Reflecting on his tech background, Yair opens up about how he learned to code before he shares insights into the languages that his company programs in, how they discovered Elixir, and how they integrated it into their practice. In a discussion that’s sure to resonate with startup managers, Yair unpacks what he does to grow as a manager, along with best practices for companies looking to adopt Elixir. We ask Yair about the benefits of coding in Elixir, how SmartLogic has retained its top employees, why he prioritizes employee happiness, and the role that company values play in strengthening SmartLogic. After hearing about Yair’s vision for the future, we jump into our mini-segment where we interview Jake Johnson, the Director of Software Engineering at TaxJar. For more on building strong companies and advice on adopting Elixir, be sure to tune in and benefit from our conversations with Yair and Jake.

Key Points From This Episode:

• SmartLogic Founder Yair Flicker talks about his first job.
• Yair shares details about SmartLogic’s humble origins.
• Early challenges SmarLogic faced and Yair’s move from coding to running a business.
• We ask Yair about how he learned to code.
• SmartLogic’s coding evolution and how they discovered Elixir.
• The Maker vs. Manager distinction; what Yair did to grow as a manager.
• Exploring the benefits of adopting Elixir.
• Yair’s advice for companies wanting to adopt Elixir.
• Why Elixir allows for more scalability than many other languages.
• How SmartLogic has been able to retain some of its top employees.
• The link between having happy employees and happy clients.
• How Yair lives his company’s values.
• Yair shares his recipe for creating productive meetings.
• Hear about Yair’s vision for SmartLogic’s future.
• For our mini-feature segment, we chat with Jake Johnson from TaxJar.
• Why TaxJar adopted Elixir and details on Jake’s background.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/
Elixir Wizards Email — podcast@smartlogic.io
Yair Flicker on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/yflicker/
Yair Flicker on Twitter — https://twitter.com/yflicker
Jake Johnson on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakej/
TaxJar — https://www.taxjar.com/
Music and Arts — https://www.musicarts.com/
Johns Hopkins University — https://www.jhu.edu/
Hackers — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/
National Conference of Synagogue Youth — https://ncsy.org/
Stanley Black & Decker — https://www.stanleyblackanddecker.com/
Reddit — https://reddit.com/
Discord — https://discord.com/
Instagram — https://www.instagram.com
Amazon Web Services — https://aws.amazon.com/
Sales Tax for Developers — https://salestax.dev
Backstreet Boys — https://linktr.ee/backstreetboys

Special Guest: Yair Flicker.